


the one with the webcam

by mayerwien



Series: show me how you do that trick [2]
Category: Now You See Me (2013)
Genre: Dylan is Team Dad, Dysfunctional Family, F/M, Friendship is Magic, Gen, Papa Dylan, The Five Horsemen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-03
Updated: 2014-02-03
Packaged: 2018-01-11 01:39:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,129
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1167076
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mayerwien/pseuds/mayerwien
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Horsemen find out that Dylan has a Skype date with Alma. They decide to make it a little more...interesting.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the one with the webcam

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: NYSM, Skype(TM), and Ruffles are not mine. I sads. (I also don’t own Joan Rivers, but I’m less sad about that one.)

“Heads up, girlfriends,” Merritt announced, sauntering into the living room. He was wearing his hat indoors as usual, for reasons only he could fathom, and an expression reminiscent of a cat well-stuffed with canaries. “Number Five’s having a date with his French ladylove tonight. Over the webcam.” He wiggled his eyebrows lecherously.

“How’d you find that out?” Henley asked, lowering her book to look at him, at the same time that Danny grumbled, “Merritt, I thought we’d established that you would stop calling us by our _numbers._ That doesn’t even make any sense.”

“Sure it does. Hen’s Number One, because ladies first. I’m Number Three. Jack’s Number Four. And you, my friend, are Number Two.” Merritt smirked, while Danny rolled his eyes and mouthed ‘Of course’ to himself. “And as to how I found out, it’s practically written on his face. I’m surprised none of you picked it up. The _real_ question is, what are we going to do, now that we know?”

The Four Horsemen looked at each other, realization slowly spreading across all their faces.

"I could do my bit," Henley began slyly, setting her book down and swinging her feet off the coffee table. “Remember Tokyo?”

Jack bounced up and down in his seat. "Me too! Me too! I’ve been practicing!"

“This is so juvenile,” complained Danny, but there was a glimmer of amusement in his eyes that you could catch if you knew him well enough.

Merritt clapped his hands. “Well then! First webcam date. Let’s make it as memorable as possible for the happy couple.”

x

An hour later, the four had reassembled in the living room. “I set the timer,” Jack announced, with a Christmas-elf grin.

Merritt clapped him on the shoulder. “Excellent work. Hen, you got the air vent open?”

“Piece of cake,” she chirped, linking her arm with Jack’s and tugging him away. “Let’s go.”   

Danny gave Merritt a withering glance. “Excuse me, you still haven’t said what _your_ part in this brilliant scheme is, Mr. _Mentalist.”_

“Moral support. You’re on in five, Number Two.”

“Stop calling me that! God!”

“Shush. And—go.” Merritt vaulted over the back of the sofa and plopped himself down on the seat, flicking the button on the remote. The TV hummed to life, and he punched the volume increase button until Joan Rivers’ voice was screeching deafeningly from the speakers. He started counting under his breath. “And a-one, and a-two, and a-one, two, three—“

The door at the end of the hall flew open, and Dylan stormed out, taking long strides until he was in the living room. “Would it kill you to keep it down?” he demanded when he saw Merritt sprawled across the sofa.

“Oh, I’m _sorry,_ Father!” Merritt’s head lolled to one side as he regarded the other man with wide, mock-terrified eyes. “I didn’t realize this was a _silent_ retreat. Mea culpa! Mea culpa!” He clasped his hands and shook them in the air, which looked less like a plea for mercy and more like a rah-rah gesture.

“Look, I don’t know what it was like where you’re from, but most people need the world around them to be operating on a normal decibel level for them to get any work done,” retorted Dylan huffily, adjusting the tie around his neck.

Merritt cast his gaze over the tie, then the clean, creaseless silk shirt. “My, don’t you look dapper. What’s the occasion?” he asked innocently.

“No occasion. Like I said. Work.” Dylan finished off his tie as Danny shuffled past him and down the hallway to his own bedroom. “Now, could you turn that down so I can get back to it?” Saluting, Merritt watched as Dylan gave him a final glare, turned on his heel, and retreated back into his bedroom.

Deliberately, Merritt pressed the volume decrease button once, then settled deeper into the sofa cushions with a smile.

x

Back in his room with the door firmly locked, Dylan booted his laptop up and logged in. The connection was unbearably slow, and he drummed his fingers impatiently on the table as he watched the little wheel in the corner of the window go round and round. Finally the window went from black to white, and then he was looking at a familiar face.

“I learned a new trick!” was the first thing she said, instead of ‘hello.’

He chuckled, leaning back in his computer chair. “Show me.”

On the other end of the video call, Alma Dray lifted up a deck of cards and grinned. They’d called each other on the phone every so often over the past few weeks, but this was the first time they had seen each other face to face in a long while. Alma’s blond hair was pulled back into a loose ponytail, and she had taken off her usual blazer and was wearing a regular tank top.

She shuffled (her technique was coming along really well, Dylan noted), cut, and shuffled again. “Okay,” she said, fanning out the deck and holding it up to the camera. “Pick a card, any c—”

“Too close,” Dylan called. “I can’t see them.”

“Whoops! Sorry.” Alma moved her hands back a little. “There. Pick a card, any card.”

He pointed. “Got one.”

Slapping the fan shut, she shuffled one last time, then squared the deck and shook it once. A single card slid out, which she flipped upward. “Is this your card?”

Five of spades. “Yeah.”

Alma shook her head. “This is not good, Agent Rhodes. You are getting predictable.” She snapped her fingers, and the words ‘ _très facile’_ appeared scrawled across the five of spades in her hand.

Laughing, Dylan clapped in approval. “Brava,” he said, feeling his chest expand. “We’ll make a magician of you yet.”

“Nah, I leave that up to you guys. This is just a hobby.” Opening a desk drawer, Alma deposited the cards neatly inside and shut it. “Although a very addicting one, I have to admit.”

“So, um.” Dylan actually heard his voice crack, and felt like kicking himself. “How is everything else?”

“Good! Really good. I have been promoted, actually.” Alma beamed.

“What? Really? That’s fantastic! Congratulations.”

“Uh-huh. And it had absolutely nothing to do with the fact that I got a very good recommendation from the FBI agent I worked with on my last case,” she said dryly.

He shrugged, embarrassed. “You deserved it.”

“I know.” She gave him that smile, that smile that he’d missed so much and still replayed in his head sometimes when the nightmares shook him awake. “But thank you. It means a lot to me.” She leaned forward a little. “How about you? How are things on the end of the infamous Agent Rhodes?”

“I’m lying low. FBI’s got me working from home now, after New York, but I set up a little something so they don’t know where I’m _really_ working from. It’s mostly research anyway... So, metaphorically, quiet. Literally—“ He made a face as another loud scream erupted from Merritt’s TV show outside—“not so quiet.”

“How are your Horsemen?”

“Riddled with cabin fever. I told them disguises or no, they had to minimize going out for at least a few more weeks, for their own safety. So naturally they’ve been bickering nonstop, and working on some new tricks in between. There’s only so much they can do in an apartment unit that doesn’t house any oversized mirrors or tanks of piranhas.”  

“You could teleport them to Paris,” she suggested lightly. “There’s a festival going on right now, and there’s a stage for performers that they’ve set up to float on the surface of the Seine.”

“God. I’d better not let them get wind of that. They’d have my credit card out of my wallet and their flight booked before I could say ‘abracadabra.’”

She laughed. “Sounds like you really care about them.”

It sounded so simple when she said it. The word ‘care’, Dylan felt, was not enough to encompass everything—all the frustration and the pride and the fear, even—that he felt for his charges. The word ‘care’ didn’t even begin to describe how it felt to emerge from his bedroom every morning to a full, noisy living room, or how it felt to always find unwashed dishes in the sink, no matter how many times he’d lectured them about cleaning up after themselves, or how it felt to have an encyclopedia’s worth of new nicknames (most of them coined by Merritt and therefore extremely insulting, but still).

Arguing with Danny about magic theory for hours on end. Getting a customary good-night peck on the cheek from Henley when he quit their movie marathons early. Being able to ruffle Jack’s hair whenever they passed each other, for no real reason at all.

But there wasn’t a good enough word anywhere. So all he said was, “Yeah, I guess you could say that.”

Or at least, that was what he had been about to say, before Alma frowned at something behind him. The little crinkle in her nose was showing. “The TV in your room.”

“What? Oh, yeah. It came with the apartment.”

“No, I mean—it’s on.” She raised an eyebrow. “With a lot of scantily clad gyrating young women on the screen, I might add.”

_“What?”_ He turned and nearly had a heart attack when he saw that she was right. Somehow, the TV had turned on by itself, and was tuned to a channel he hadn’t even known existed.

“What the hell—“ Dylan stumbled out of his computer chair, tripping over one of its wheels in the process, and grabbed the remote. He pressed the off button, but nothing happened. He pressed it again in vain, lifted it and realized it weighed considerably less than usual, then threw it down in disgust—no doubt Merritt had stolen the batteries for his stupid battery-operated razor again.

Crossing the room, he fumbled for the manual off button on the wailing TV, swore when he realized there wasn’t one, and settled for yanking the plug out of the wall socket. “Alma, I am so sorry,” he said over his shoulder. “I was not watching that, I swear, I don’t know what happened.”

From the laptop behind him, Alma coughed. “Um, Dylan. You also might want to check your back pocket.” Expecting the worst, he craned his neck around, reached in and extracted the mystery object from his pocket.

It was _worse_ than he had expected. It was hot pink, and had black lace and little rosettes on it, and was most definitely not his. But perhaps even worse than that was the fact that when he pulled it out, another one followed. And another. And another.

Turning around in a fruitless attempt to see the back of his pants, Dylan scrabbled furiously at the pocket, balled the entire thing in his fist and gave it a tug, and yelped when a chain of small frilly unmentionables exploded over his desk. Frantically sweeping them to the floor, he looked back up at the screen. “This is so not what you think.”

“I’m sure it’s not,” Alma replied calmly, folding her hands.

“It’s probably just Henley’s, we all share a dryer, we’re always forgetting to use cling sheets in the dr— _Henley!”_

“Henley? Who is Henley?” a disembodied, Russian-accented female voice called out. It sounded like it was coming from somewhere _inside_ the walls, and he whipped his head around, searching for the source. “I am _Sofiya._ Or have you forgotten that already, you naughty boy?”

“Oh, my go—you guys, cut that out right now.” He leaped to his feet and banged his fist on each wall in turn, testing them. “Right. Fucking. Now.”

“Ooh, sounds like a good plan to me!”

“Dylan, what’s _taking_ you so long?” another, unfamiliar female voice whined. This one sounded a little more strained, though, like... like a man doing falsetto. “Hurry up and get back in here! We’re _loooonely,_ and this bed is getting so _coooold.”_

“Jesus.” Dylan covered his face with his hands. The disembodied voices then proceeded to make a series of obscene whooping sounds, which called up the slightly disturbing mental image of Woody Woodpecker having a night out in Vegas.

“You seem to be otherwise occupied. Should we continue this some other time?” Alma’s voice sounded cool. But when he finally worked up the courage to lower his hands and look, he saw she was grinning widely.

“Please.” Dylan’s shoulders sagged in relief.

“Go get them. And then give them all a hug and a kiss from me.”

He leaned over to exit the video call. “I love you.”

“Love you too,” she said, smiling, just before the screen went blank and he went charging out of the bedroom. 


End file.
